For John Hagee, Hitler Was God’s Will, but Hagel Must Be Stopped

The well-funded but secretive campaign against Chuck Hagel has received some important press attention, and a pithy summary in this cartoon from Politico. The “grassroots” segment of it makes its presence felt on Capitol Hill today, in the form of several hundred Christians United for Israel “leaders” who have received all-expenses-paid trips to lobby their senators against the Nebraskan. Last week, CUFIers received an email informing them that “Thanks to the gift of a generous donor, the CUFI action fund will be able to pay for the flight and hotel expenses of the first 200 leaders who register for this emergency action alert meeting.” I wonder if AIPAC delegates, who hold a convention every year and pay for their own transport and expenses, are ever so slightly envious of the special treatment accorded their Christian allies.

Christians United for Israel is led by the storied Reverend John Hagee, who is known most notably for claiming that New Orleans was being punished by God in the form of Hurricane Katrina because the city had been preparing to hold a gay rights parade on the morning the storm came. Oh, and also his claim that Hitler was fulfilling God’s Will in driving the Jews of Europe to Palestine. That should really slam the door on Hagel’s nomination, opposition from the man who says Hitler was sent from heaven!

22 Responses to For John Hagee, Hitler Was God’s Will, but Hagel Must Be Stopped

SM, kudos to you. It should be said that ATAC among blogs addresses religion & politics honestly despite the heat. I remember when you guys got slammed for closely examining Romney’s mormonism $$$ in a post.

All the Hagee one needs to see: the “In Defense of Israel” video. It’s on youtube.

Readers of the scripture, brace thyself if you take the new covenant seriously.

I used to question that the Church in the Middle Ages would condemn heretics to burning at the stake. Then I listened to the ministry of John Hagee, and I began to understand the Church in the Middle Ages.

It beggars belief that no one in the media has followed the money in the matter of sudden wholesale TV evangelical Zionism. I can’t channel surf without seeing televangelists preaching with Israeli flags in the background. Are we to believe that all of a sudden a profound zionist revelation descended upon the theological elite of TV Bible thumpers? The cause I think, is obvious.

This nonsense is an affront to most Jews I know and an acute embarrassment to pious, literate Christians.

After 9/11 John Hagee came to my attention because of his angry and vituperative campaign against Islam – ALL of Islam, not the heretics that have usurped the name and spirit of Islam in a terror crusade. I was reminded by my then grade school daughter of a popular question of the time: WWJD, “What would Jesus do?” I have never heard anything from or about this self-styled “Christian” ministry that even vaguely resembles the teachings of Jesus Christ.

I’m a Christian, but I have no use for Hagee nor any use for Christians United for Israel. Whether or not dispensational premillenialism is a correct interpretation of Scripture is one thing, but Hagee has flirted with “dual covenant” theology which is clearly heretical.

That said, this post is a cheap shot. God is sovereign. He clearly uses means to bring about His ends. Didn’t the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem come about as a result of the unfaithfulness of Israel? Would it be scandalous to suggest that God used Babylon to punish Israel? Well I hope not, because He did. The Bible clearly indicates this.

While Hagee was probably not wise to say those things definitively, the idea that God uses events to punish and bring about His ends is not scandalous. Read the Old Testament. It is replete with examples.

>why does the media do so little to explore the astonishing programme pursued by John Hagee?

Because Hagee and America’s media moguls are rooting for
the same team:

‘It is Kristol and company as well as the politicians they have in their pockets who have the ability to appear on television to tell the American people why they should reject Chuck Hagel. They are the ones with the money, the organization, and the media savvy to lead the fight against someone whose fealty to Israel is not sufficiently established, not Pastor John Hagee and his mewling evangelical flock in Texas. For Kristol and his associates it is indeed all about Israel and it always has been. Every nominee to a senior defense, intelligence, or security council position must be vetted and judged by whether or not they are completely committed to support the Israeli government, no matter what it does and no matter what the impact would be on American interests. That is what Bill Kristol and his friends are all about’

Probally because after ignoring Jeremiah Wright, and Jackson, and Sharpton. They’d feel pretty hypocritical. I like how not one of these posters has the slightest doubt that God doesn’t support Israel. Seems like you guys are pretty plugged in upstairs. What’s Saint Augustine like?

As any Reformed Christian can tell you, neither Hitler nor Stalin nor any other villain of history you would care to name has worked his evil, except that God has foreordained that he do so, and not beyond that which God has willed, and, ultimately, only to fulfill God’s good purpose. It is called the Doctrine of Providence.

That being said, I don’t have any use for John Hagee’s Christian Zionism. It is an heretical misinterpretation of the teachings of the Scirptures. This is also the judgment of Reformed Theology.

A few years ago I played the role of one of the featured villains in a film production of the John Bunyan classic, “Pilgrim’s Progress”, the Giant Despair. The film has received wide distribution through John Hagee’s Ministries. I hope all those who would like to launch the United States, or even the State of Israel, into the Battle of Armageddon will get the Giant’s message.

This “man of God”, who had so little self control that he was kicked out of his first ministry because he got caught, as a married minister with children, fiddling with the church secretary (his present, second wife), waddles his fat behind around, calling for nuclear war and the annihilation of whole peoples.

The 19,000 members of his mega church, and the thousands more who are members of CUFI, find no problem accepting their rotund leader’s redemption for fornicating with the flock, but Chuck Hagel is beyond the pale for committing the unforgivable sin of putting the interests of his own country above those of a vassal state.

The cynical alliance of people among the Israeli Lobby with lunatics such as Hagee, people who are certainly too intelligent to buy into that lunatic’s rantings, is going to come back to bite them in the butt one day. They are going to have a “Reverend Wright” moment in their future.

There is no good reason to go about life assuming God is using people or means for some end result you can concoct. If He does, then so be it, but don’t guess at it. That is when you lose all rationality and perspective (e.g., “I got divorced not because I cheated on my wife but because God predestined it to be”).

So, in no way was the post a cheap shot in my view. Nobody, even Calvinists, even dispensationalists, should claim God is using evil for His benefit. In fact, the NEW TESTAMENT says that is impossible

“While Hagee was probably not wise to say those things definitively, the idea that God uses events to punish and bring about His ends is not scandalous. Read the Old Testament. It is replete with examples.”

There is no good reason to go about life assuming God is using people or means for some end result you can concoct. If He does, then so be it, but don’t guess at it. That is when you lose all rationality and perspective (e.g., “I got divorced not because I cheated on my wife but because God predestined it to be”).

So, in no way was the post a cheap shot in my view. Nobody, even Calvinists, even dispensationalists, should claim God is using evil for His benefit. In fact, the NEW TESTAMENT says that is impossible

@T. Sledge “The cynical alliance of people among the Israeli Lobby with lunatics such as Hagee, people who are certainly too intelligent to buy into that lunatic’s rantings,”

Are you suggesting that the Israel Lobby isn’t itself chock full of raving loons? These people are fanatics, my friend. Don’t ever forget that. They will make alliances with anyone who furthers their monomaniacal ends – including cranks like Hagee, Chinese Communists, terrorist groups (or “former” terrorist groups like MEK), you name it.

They were willing not only to risk exposing Americans to the likely blowback from their activities here on behalf of Israel, but then to pretend that their activities had nothing to do with the attacks culminating in 9/11 (“they hate us because of our freedoms” blah blah). No doubt some of them actually believe this incredible horseshit, making them no less lunatic than Hagee, and far more dangerous.

To presume one knows the purpose of God in everything which God, in His providence, has allowed to pass, is guesswork, and may be justly criticized, as you do. Preaching that the founding and development of the modern State of Israel is a fulfillment of the Bible’s end times prophecies is a good example of such guesswork and of its inherent dangers. I have always believed that Christians should assess the challenges they meet in life, the tragic events “beyond their control”, as occasions for them to pause and reassess how they are living their lives in accordance with God’s purposes for them, recognizing that we are all put here for purposes greater than our own welfare and satisfaction, or even that of our loved ones.

But don’t try to combat the error of believing that we can know God’s purpose behind every atrocity or tragedy with the equally tragic error of believing that God has no purpose in them. It is clearly taught in the New Testament, as well as the Old, that “God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them”. Romans 8:28 (New Living Translation)

FTR, while I come from a dispensational background, I am skeptical of it as an interpretive framework, but even if it is wrong, it is not heretical, a term that should not be thrown around lightly as it implies soul jeopardizing. Nothing about dispensationalism alters core fundamental Christian doctrine. The “dual covenant” theology that Hagee has flirted with does, but that is not a core feature of dispensationalism and has been condemned by many conservative Christians to the extent they realize he has done so.

Red, the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. declared in 1944 that the doctrines of dispensationalism then being taught, including the teaching that divided God’s People into two parts, Jewish and Christian, were incompatible with the Westminster Confession of Faith, the defining document for the contours of Reformed Christianity in the United States. Declaring that the doctrines of the dispensationalists are “heretical” is not nearly as “soul jeopardizing” as teaching that Jews may have a path to heaven that does not come through Jesus Christ.